his wife might be changed down there in that desolate black country.  When the great strike of miners broke out he at first minimized its seriousness, thinking that it would not last a week.  By his lack of decided action he forfeited to some extent the confidence of his directors, but he regained this by the subsequent measures taken by him for bringing the strike to an end, and ultimately received the decoration of an officer of the Legion of Honour.  His domestic life was, however, once more embittered by the discovery of a liaison between his wife and his nephew, Paul Negrel.  Germinal.

HENNEBEAU (MADAME), wife of the preceding, was the daughter of a rich spinner at Arras.  She did not get on well with her husband, whom she despised for his small success, and after she accompanied him to Paris she entered into a notorious liaison with a man whose subsequent desertion nearly killed her.  For a time after their removal to Montsou she seemed more contented, but this did not last long, and she ultimately consoled herself with her husband’s nephew, Paul Negrel.  She was angry at the strikers, as they interfered with the arrival of provisions for a dinner-party which she was giving; but she was incapable of understanding the sufferings of the miners and their families in the hardships they were forced to undergo.  Germinal.

HEQUET (CAROLINE), a well-known demi-mondaine in Paris.  Her father, who was a clerk in Bordeaux, was long since dead, and her mother, accepting the situation, looked after Caroline’s financial affairs with the strictest regularity.  She bought the estate known as La Mignotte after Nana tired of it.  Nana.

HEQUET (MADAME), mother of the preceding.  She was a model of orderliness, who kept her daughter’s accounts with severe precision.  She managed the whole household from some small lodgings two stories above her daughter’s, where, moreover, she had established a work-room for dressmaking and plain sewing.  Nana.

HERBELIN, a great chemist whose discoveries revolutionized that science.  Lazare Chanteau, who was for some time in his laboratory as an assistant, got from him the idea of extracting chemicals from seaweed by a new process.  La Joie de Vivre.

HERMELINE, a student of rhetoric at the college of Plassans.  He was in love with Sister Angele, and once went the length of cutting his hands with his penknife to get an opportunity of seeing and speaking to her while she dressed his self-inflicted hurts.  In the end the student and the Sister ran off together.  L’Oeuvre.

HIPPOLYTE, valet to Duveyrier.  Pot-Bouille.

HIPPOLYTE, valet to Hennebeau, the manager of the Montsou Mining
Company.  Germinal.

HOMME NOIR (L’), an apparition said to haunt the Voreux pit.  It was said to take the form of an old miner who twisted the necks of bad girls.  Germinal.

HONORINE, a maid-servant with the Gregoires.  She was a girl of some twenty years, who had been taken in as a child and brought up in the house.  Germinal.